Take your school into the future

One of bak’s USPs is its ability to work across multiple languages and cultures, hopping back and forth from one tongue to the next with practiced facility (check out our work pages for examples). Some of our biggest successes have been with bilingual campaigns and we were proud to be given the opportunity to work with the executive team at one of French education’s most prestigious institutions, The Lycée  Charles De Gaulle de Londres, on a revamp of their branding and communication strategy in French and English.

One of the notable achievements has been a measurable increase in engagement with internal communications and with a month on month increase in reach on social media (average of 16% each month). There’s a lot of positive feedback coming from staff and students about the new image and our designs and merch are much in demand. 

We began, as always, by working with their comms team on defining their audience and establishing some concrete KPIs. We were given the all clear to reframe their communications with a vibrant, contemporary modern tone — balancing the school’s prestige with warmth and approachability, reflecting the energy of the students as much as the school and staff.

Our primary audience for our Strategic Communication Strategy was parents, staff and students — with a mix of French-English bilingual content for inclusivity and reach. This bilingual aspect is the key to creating trust with the audience. Not all parents are fluent in French and The Lycée very much wanted to focus on its identity as a bilingual school with a thriving British section.

We believe that having a strong eye-catching slogan to build a campaign around and that reflects the brand values and ethos of the organisation is the key to success. After much discussion and debate with the school, our team came up with Ç’est Ça The Lycée. It was a slogan that summed up the uniqueness of the school, with a strong visual styling. There was a cheeky nod to bilingualism with the light touch franglais of the title, '‘The’ slipping into the familiar French almost imperceptibly and the flair and freedom fo the handdrawn graphics.

We quickly identified the monthly newsletter as the principal communiciation tool for the school. We totally revamped the design and presentation of the newsletter to make it more user friendly. We’ve got some clear measures of success here, seeing a higher percentage of engagement with the newsletter. 

We’ve also suggested and organised events and designed and produced huge banners (what better place to advertise the school than from the walls of the building facing the Science Museum in the bustling neighbourhood of South Kensington) and created a custom made anti-bullying campaign and super-hero, BullyDozer for the school. Ç’est Ça The Lycée!